Wanted: Comments, Critique & Feedback

My blog http://gomi.outerworldadult.com/ is done and ready to go live, I think.
I’m tweaking the colors in the admin interface right now, but the public section is ready for your comments, issues, thoughts, fears, anxieties etc. Please take a look, click around, and let me know of any issues you find, and if you see anything that needs fixing please let me know (and if you’ve got ideas on how to fix, that would be great). I know that things don’t look quite right on Mac OSX IE5.* and I’m working on fixing that soon. I’ve been able to check this out in Mac OSX: Safari 1.* and Firefox 1.* and Win98: Firefox and IE.
If you only want to critique the design please be specific. i.e. if you say ‘that blue thing looks odd’ I’ll have no idea what you are talking about or your issues.
I started with theme Wuhan and began with very minor modding from there. The content is still default at this point, so no fun entries or comments for you to enjoy. Thanks for looking and helping me out.

Looks great. I’m not sure about the title of the blog, though. Is it Gomt, Gomi, or something like that.

The colors are great, and the borders around the excerpts are fabu. Excellent CSS work.

I did have a problem, which may be something I caught during the modifications you were making, and that is with the black title against the navy blue background in the title headings. While it is a great combination for dyslexics, who will be able to actually “see” this better, it is not enough contrast for the normal eye-ballers. You can go with a lighter blue text or white, or shift the heading background color to something lighter, but I like the dark navy. It’s a little thing.

I did a quick little validation and you got a couple of messed up nested list stuff in the sidebar, but then, who doesn’t. It’s a maze in there. The CSS wouldn’t validate because of the nesting list error, but you can check all that, too.

Very original looking. I love the little details you’ve done. Good work.

I like the design on the header, the colors, are..eh…so-so.
also I dont think Yoda would kick my ass, I think he would treat me right because he knows what love is.
anyhoo, it certainly looks like you put alot of time into the header, it’s very quality imo.

I would suggest spending an equal amount of time on the css for the site. But what do I know?

I’ll address the color issues in a moment, but first;
Lorelle: Good catch on the black text vs. navy blue. That was something I missed.
I had been wondering about adding a dot to the ‘i’ in the Gomi header. I’ll add that and update it soon.
I do have some validation issues, and I just can’t seem to get them to resolve. I’ll keep picking at it like a week-old scab until I can get it right, but any suggestions would be most welcome.
Jedyt: The nav bar has grown on me. I think it will be useful once multiple authors and other content is added. It was a part of the orginal theme http://wuhan.authenticasian.com/ I’ve since noticed that MacManX puts it to good use on his site http://www.macmanx.com/ and I’ll do something simillar to these two when content is finally added.
Pauljohns: I’m an utter and comlete newb when it comes to CSS. (I had thought I was getting away from newbie status, but I’ve since learned better.) Can you give some examples/pointers to what you mean about putting time into CSS?

Now for colors-
The color scheme is what I have to work with. But alterations can be done.
The choice of colors is based on Fun&Jolly (there is more to it than that, but I don’t feel like writing a novel), I was trying to use these colors to convey that feeling, but it doesn’t seem to have worked for the most part.
The scheme that has to be stuck to is, Primary Colors: Green and Blue – Secondary Colors: Purple and Yellow
I can easily change the graphics and mess around with combinations and choices. That isn’t a big problem. So does anyone have any ideas on how to send the idea of fun and joy with this color scheme? (I would like to keep the Dark Green background, I’ve grown attached to it.)

I think my problem with the top bar is the way it’s floating up there. Those other two sites work a little better (I think) because of the way the header image, the content, the sidebar, and the nav bar all have the same border. It’s consistent. With your site, the title is meshed with the background, and so the navbar floating up there doesn’t feel right to me. Maybe if you meshed the navbar in with the background like you did with the title, it might look good, but it might not either, I’m not good at visualizing layouts.
That’s just my opinion though, and I’ve been known to misjudge things completely.

well, as far as spending more time on css, i just wanted to say that you seem to have a good eye, imho, for making graphics, so try to translate that to css. not everything has to be a flat color, you can add depth with a few graphical elements.

take my site for example. the theme had a nav bar at the top with a flat, one color background. using css and just a 1px thick img that takes less than a second to load on the slowest dial-up, i was able to add some depth to the flat nav bar. flat isnt always bad, but since your site uses alot of it, it really contrasts with the tangibility and depth of your header graphic.

if none of this makes sense, its because i’m really sleepy.

use this resource though, it’s helped me alot, although it doesnt go over all css possibilities, it will get you started if you’re a css newb: Css. Yum.

Jedyt: I see and understand what you are saying about the nav bar, and now that you’ve pointed it out, it bugs me as well. Tomorrow I’ll try altering it to blend more. I’m done for today.

pauljohns: I’m a little leary of adding too much ‘graphical style’ since this is already busy enough as is with the colors. But starting tomorrow, I’m going to work at re-doing the scheme a bit, and I’ll see what I can do about adding more ‘pop’ and lose the flatness. As well as make the colors flow a bit better.

Over at the blog, the ability to preview comments before posting was mentioned. Does anyone know of a plugin or hack that would allow this? It’s a good idea.

And if there are any more comments or thoughts about my blog, I’d love to hear them before I start tearing it up.

woohooblog: Thanks for the kind comments here and at my blog. I like the look as well. I just think I can make the colors blend a little better and make it so most everyone likes it. I don’t want people to leave because they don’t like the layout, and I’m in no rush, I can keep tweaking this until it’s nearly perfect. Of course if lots more people were to post they liked the scheme, I’d prbably leave things alone (except for the two minor items I’ve mentioned in the blog). I will be keeping with the same Green/Blue and Purple/Yellow colors, so that won’t change much.

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